Cather, Glaspell, and Hurston

Willa Cather

I felt a little sorry for the narrator’s Aunt Georgiana in “A Wagner Matinée”. She was coming back to a town she had left long ago to settle the estate of a male relative of hers. This woman was tired because of all the work she had done since she moved from Boston. She met a man and they ran off and got married. She did not want to hear her family’s comments, so they moved to Nebraska. I feel bad for them because they barely had anything. They had to build their own house and work really hard to make things work. The one thing that took the aunt's mind off of her hard work was opera music. Her nephew took her to the opera and she enjoyed it so much. For a little while she did not have to think about working and taking care of everything. She could just relax and listen to the music. I also felt bad when the show was over because it was back to reality for Aunt Georgiana. I found “Paul’s Case” to be a very sad story. It seemed to me like the only happiness this boy could find was when he was in a theater. He did not like school, he did not like being at home, he only enjoyed being at the theater. When he was at the theater, he could let his mind run wild and have no regrets. His imagination ran into his real life and he began confusing the two. It seemed to me like he was sent away as a young boy and the story picked up later in his life. The theater was yet again his place of utter happiness. He had stolen and lied as much as he could in his life and I feel that the guilt finally caught up to him. I thought it was sad that he felt the only way he could solve his problems was to jump in front of a train and be killed.

Susan Glaspell

I remember reading “Trifles” in my English 113 class. I did not really understand the story, even after the teacher tried to explain it to us. This time when I read it, I understood it. The ladies were worried about all of the things the men saw a being unimportant. While the men went around looking for any evidence they could find, the women solved the whole case. They knew who did it, why they did it, and how. Mrs. Hale knew Mrs. Wright. She had known her for a while. She knew how much Mrs. Wright loved to sing and once she married Mr. Wright, the singing stopped. She got the canary so she could hear the singing once again, but Mr. Wright ended that too. He took away everything she loved and she did not know how to deal with it. I think the reason she had sewed some bad stitches was because she was nervous. She had killed her husband and her adrenaline levels were probably up. She could not get her nervous energy out of her body before she started stitching. The ladies found the bird Mr. Wright had obviously killed by breaking its neck. I am guessing that Mrs. Wright only saw it fit that she kill him the way he killed her, in a sense. He took away everything that had ever made her the least bit happy and she felt she should do the same to him. She was probably just waiting for someone to come find her and him and take her away. Mrs. Wright would probably have been a little happier in jail because she could sing there. The men may have found it to be funny that the women were worrying about “trifles” but in the end the joke was on the men. The women solved the murder and it seemed to me like they tried their hardest to hide the evidence so they were the only ones who could solve it with all of the evidence.

Zora Neale Hurston

It seems to me like “How It Feels to be Colored Me” is about Hurston’s life. The girl in the story moved around like she did and experienced the same things she had experienced. I thought it was really neat how she tied her life story into this story without making it sound like she was just talking about herself. I enjoyed reading this story because it was very interesting. After reading Hurston’s background story, I feel a little bad for her. She was shipped off to live with other family members until her dad could no longer afford it. She turned around her life for the better. She worked hard, but her hard work did not pay off in the end. She was accused of something she had not done and that led to her reputation going down the drain. I felt bad when I read she died broke after she had been so popular in her prime. I thought “The Gilded Six-Bits” was a pretty good story. Missie May and Joe were so in love. He thought the world of her and would do anything for her and she felt the same about him, or so I thought. I was surprised that Missie May had cheated on Joe. I thought that she loved him and I thought it was wrong for her to sleep with Otis Slemmons. I know she wanted the gold that he had, but there had to have been a better way to get it. I was also surprised that Joe stayed with Missie May after all this had occurred. I guess once he realized the gold was not real, he felt bad that his wife had been fooled by the other man. The fact that Joe stayed around showed that he was a true gentleman. I was happy that Joe got a son in the end. I thought it might have been Slemmons, but I guess not. I was happy when the story ended with Joe going back to his old ways and treating his wife with the silver coins and candy kisses.